Yom Hashoah is Holocaust Remembrance Day. We are admonished to “Never Forget” that 6 Million Jews were slaughtered and remember them on this day so that such a travesty will not be repeated. Candles are lit, poems are read, songs are sung. Since it is a relatively new holiday, there are no set rules for its observance. We’d like to suggest one. Wear a gun!
What, you ask, would be appropriate about wearing a gun to recognize such an event? Let us “NEVER FORGET” that evil was able to slaughter 6 Million Jews because they had NO MEANS OF SELF DEFENSE. Prior to being herded like cattle onto trains, ripped from families and thrown into camps, the Jews were systematically disarmed. All one needs to do is theorize how this slaughter would have been possible if the 6 Million had access to firearms! In point of fact, a group of Polish College students held off SS troops for almost a month in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, with merely a few firearms. If only they’d had more guns and more people willing to take them up. Here is the information copied from the United States Holocaust Museum
Many Jews in ghettos across eastern Europe tried to organize resistance
against the Germans and to arm themselves with smuggled and homemade weapons.
Between 1941 and 1943, underground
resistance movements formed in about 100 Jewish groups. The most famous
attempt by Jews to resist the Germans in armed fighting occurred in the Warsaw ghetto.
In the summer of 1942, about 300,000 Jews were deported from Warsaw to
Treblinka.
When reports of mass murder in the killing center leaked back to
the Warsaw ghetto, a surviving group of mostly young people formed an
organization called the Z.O.B. (for the Polish name, Zydowska Organizacja
Bojowa, which means Jewish Fighting Organization). 
The Z.O.B., led by 23-year-old Mordecai Anielewicz, issued a proclamation
calling for the Jewish people to resist going to the railroad cars. In
January 1943, Warsaw ghetto fighters fired upon German troops as they
tried to round up another group of ghetto inhabitants for deportation.
Fighters used a small supply of weapons that had been smuggled into the
ghetto. After a few days, the troops retreated. This small victory inspired
the ghetto fighters to prepare for future resistance.
On April 19, 1943, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German
troops and police entered the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants.
Seven hundred and fifty fighters fought the heavily armed and well-trained
Germans. 
The ghetto fighters were able to hold out for nearly a month, but
on May 16, 1943, the revolt ended. The Germans had slowly crushed the
resistance. Of the more than 56,000 Jews captured, about 7,000 were shot,
and the remainder were deported to killing
centers or concentration camps.
What we most need to remember from this is that defending your life is not only a Mtizvah, it is the only thing that will stop future Holocausts from wiping out selected groups of people. Fighting back, instead of allowing your children to be slaughtered in camps, is the most appropriate method of Observing Yom Hashoah and respecting the memory of those who died at the hands of evil. Being armed and trained to do so is your mandate and your legacy.
In whatever form you observe Yom Hashoah, the memory of the Jewish victims will live on.
